How I Learned That Unapologetic Black Anger Can Change the World for the Better

Ultimately, white folks’ fear of black anger is an act of psychological projection because White America would not tolerate for a moment the treatment that it routinely dispenses on black Americans and other people of color. Anger and upset at injustice and ill treatment are natural, human responses. Like any other people, black folks have a full range of emotions. Black America is asked to suppress and hide its anger; White America is rarely if ever asked to do the same thing.

For example, black America is asked to forgive and forget racial terrorism. White America never forgives or negotiates with terrorists. Instead, the United States hunts them down and kills with due haste and without apology.

White supremacy has forced black Americans, as a historic matter of survival, to wear a mask that is used to hide the full range of our emotions. In many ways, to publicly deny a full range of our emotion is a profoundly unnatural and unhealthy behavior. The mask also means that all too often, black justice claims are compromised, massaged, and repackaged as to avoid making white folks too uncomfortable. This is an act of surrender to white racial fragility and white privilege—moves that in the long-term accomplish little as power concedes nothing without a demand.